ENS5510 · Innovation to influence system change

Overview

Leadership toward sustainable development requires you to address complex problems that are often systemic and politically charged. This unit will empower you to use creative processes and industry-relevant tools to make sense of large complex systemsand develop innovative ideas to create sustainable outcomes for real-world challenges. You will learn key theories of system and political change and apply these to examine components of real systems we live in, such as transport, climate, and health. You will unpack a real system’s structures, rules, norms, values, politics and technologies. This will enable you to clearly frame problems, reveal and avoid biases and uncover leverage points that help or hinder sustainable development outcomes. Having developed your systemic understanding, you will develop an innovation to influence change. The unit will equip you with industry-ready creative, analytical and practical tools to ensure your innovation is effective and fit-for-context, and build your skills to advocate and win support for your initiative.

Areas of study: Leadership for sustainable development International development practice

Offerings

Assessment

The Handbook does not list a final examination among the assessment items. That is not a guarantee there is none.

Assessment details may change. Please refer to the assessment information in Moodle closer to the start of the teaching period.

Requisites

The Handbook lists no prerequisite, corequisite or prohibition for this unit.

Learning outcomes

1. Investigate, interpret and assess selected societal and systemic change theories, methods and debates;
2. Apply systems thinking theory and tools to make sense of complex real-world situations;
3. Evaluate interactions between organisations, communities and their social and political contexts and identify factors which encourage or support sustainable outcomes;
4. Use creative and critical processes to innovate and influence toward system change;
5. Design, refine and persuasively communicate an innovative change intervention for a real-world sustainability challenge.

Workload

• Workshops equivalent to 2 (online) or 3 (on campus) hours per week and • Independent study equivalent to 9 (on campus) or 10 (online) hours per week. The difference in workload reflects an expectation that one applied activity per week will run in-class (for on campus students) or be completed independently (for online students). These activities support the overall unit assignments. In both cases, careful guidance will be provided, and time in-class allocated to debrief, share and reflect on the weekly activity.

Student experience, not official rules. Nothing here changes what the Handbook says.